


pundi-try

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, bangster, warning: angst at the end (of course), warning: michael owen cameo, warning: paul scholes mention (of course)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:01:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie tries to get Gary back to the studio by saying the most ridiculous things. Gary is not amused. Phil has cookies so he doesn't care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pundi-try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neyvenger (jjjat3am)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/gifts).



> Because julija is mean and makes me be sad about things

Gary’s nose was twitching, which meant that his annoyance-o-meter was just about busting its upper limit, and that, coupled with his proximity to various pointy objects, was making Phil very nervous indeed. “Look at this,” he growled, shoving his phone at Phil, who frowned as he read the headline aloud.

“Jamie Carragher is a useless turkey.”

To be fair, it was accompanied by a relatively flattering picture of Carragher that bore no resemblance to the bird, although – also to be fair – Phil had only to dredge up snippets of Carragher’s voice to understand the comparison. He raised an eyebrow at Gary, who flushed and shook his head. “Not that one, you dolt. Scroll down.”

“Carragher: United need to return to 3-5-2.”

This was also accompanied by a relatively flattering picture of Carragher, this time in a suit, which was still of no help to Phil in solving one of the mysteries of his world (why anyone, least of all his brother, would turn down David sodding Beckham in favour of a perpetually angry, and apparently avian, Scouser).

_“Well?”_

Gary looked like his head was about to explode from rage at any moment, and Phil wished silently that they’d been in Gary’s house instead of his; it would be _such_ a bitch to clean up. Realising that this was probably the least of his worries (the most being a dead brother and/or being stabbed by a pencil), Phil gulped. “Erm. 3-5-2 was our worst formation?”

“Exactly!” Gary snatched his phone back and furiously circled the offending phrase with said pencil, only noticing afterwards that he was not improving the dilapidated condition of his outdated Nokia by drawing on it. “What the fuck is he going on about – we’ve proven time and again that we’re absolutely shit with three at the back – even more so than we currently are, and that’s saying a lot.”

“Why don’t you give him a call?” Phil suggested, before the full weight of his brother’s glare made him question his life decisions, consider abandoning all worldly pleasures, and become a hermit living under a rock.

“That’s _exactly_ what he wants me to do,” Gary muttered darkly, grinding the pencil into the table (Phil winced at the lead stains and vowed that, if he ever got out of here alive, he was never letting Gary near stationery again). “The devious little bastard. He’s probably spouting crap just to get me to call him and be a pundit again.”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Phil snorted, holding up a cookie in one hand and using the other to swipe the rest of the pencils away while his brother was distracted. “Besides, it’s just a call. It’s not like you have him on your speed dial or anything.”

Gary stiffened on his way to reaching for the cookie, and Phil slowly lifted his eyes to look at him. “Gary,” he said with surprising calm, “is Jamie Carragher on your speed dial?”

Gary swallowed and nodded.

“Is his name above mine?”

Gary swallowed and nodded again. “Not that far ahead,” he squeaked, in possibly one of the most flimsy defences since Sir Alex had decided to field them as centre backs.

Phil _knew_ that grabbing the pencils would come in useful. 

 

-

 

It was with great foresight that Phil had insisted on watching Monday Night Football at Gary’s house, and he grinned with vindication at the sight of nose twitching. “Oh, come on!” Gary yelled, waving his arms around wildly, in a credible impersonation of Paul the Octopus (the symbol of a dark period in Scholesy’s life). “That’s bonkers! No _way_ is Jack Butland better than David de Gea! Is he off his fucking rocker?" 

“A case could be made for him not ever being on it in the first place,” Phil interjected sagely, only to receive yet another look that made him reconsider the distribution of his will. “What? You probably wrote half of that case yourself.”

“Only because he’s sodding claiming that de Gea isn’t the best keeper in the league,” Gary fumed, his mood not improving through the length of the broadcast, in which Carragher managed to mess up Chelsea (‘can win the league’), Tottenham (‘need to buy more foreign players’) and even Liverpool (‘made a big mistake selling Balotelli’). By the end of the show, his fingers were smashing the password into his phone. Phil gave him an encouraging smile that was soon wiped off his face by the sight of a finger pointing at the exit.

“Is Scholesy ahead of me on your speed dial too?” Phil shouted as the door slammed shut in his face.

 

-

 

Jamie was greeted by such a barrage of Manc noise that he ended up holding the phone away from his ear for a couple of minutes, finishing his sandwich before returning to the matter at hand. “Neville. Calm down. I can’t understand a word of what you’re saying.”

“Well, I can’t fucking understand _you_ either,” Gary whined. “What the fuck are you going on about? Spurs with foreign imports? Chelsea winning the league? Even Liverpool have a better chance of doing that, and it’s _Liverpool_.”

“I never said Liverpool couldn’t win it,” Jamie pointed out, and there came a loud thumping noise that Jamie assumed was what you got when you crossed an exasperated Manc with a wall.

“Speaking of Liverpool – _Balotelli_? Really? You want Balotelli back in your side? The bloke who cost you £20m for one goal?”

Jamie shrugged. “Well. I mean. Maybe he wasn’t the greatest striker or anything, but you always need a player or two to set off fireworks in your bathroom.”

If ever there was a vocal equivalent for facepalming, Gary was doing a very good job of it. “You said he was a major mistake in August after the Arsenal game!” he protested, before understanding the implications of what he’d just said, biting his lip, and hoping dearly for a hole to open up in front of him. 

If there was a vocal equivalent for leering, Jamie was doing a very good job of it. “Should I be reading into the fact that you remember exactly what I said and when I said it?” he purred, or at least tried to purr, when really it came out as Exhibit A of why there’d never been any scouse Bond girls.

“No,” Gary said through teeth more gritted than a gritty adaptation of grit-eating cowboys in True Grit. “And I don’t have your number on speed dial either.”

“You’re so sweet,” Jamie said fondly as he listened to Gary presumably trying to stuff his tongue down his throat. “Stay tuned for tomorrow, darling.”

“What are you going to say tomorrow?” Gary gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re going to insist that Soldado is better than Kane?”

“Oooh. Fascinating idea. I shall certainly add it to the list. But no, Gareth, it’s not what I’m going to say tomorrow.”

“Soldado didn’t adapt quick enough and didn’t make enough runs and my name isn’t Gareth what the _fuck_ are you going to say tomorrow – ”

Jamie put down the phone and went to get himself another sandwich. Michael the Midget Gem Owen was coming over the next day to learn why ‘it's a good run, but it's a poor run, if you know what I mean’ was completely unacceptable as punditry, and he was going to need all the strength he could muster.

 

-

 

It wasn’t usually a good omen when someone spilt their morning cereal all over their lap. It was even less of a good omen when that someone was Gary Neville, who treated his morning cereal with a reverence most people reserved for the ancient relics, and would cry (had cried) over spilt Weetabix. Phil looked at him with the utmost concern.

“You all right?” he asked, squinting suspiciously at the trembling phone in Gary’s hand.

Gary blinked and stared at him as blankly as something blank, before leaving his phone on the table and wandering off in a daze known only to people who’d hit their head on very solid objects. Phil flipped the phone around and froze.

“Carragher: Gary was the lesser Neville.”

Phil put the phone down and began to laugh. He wasn’t sure which was funnier: that he was being used as a pawn in the weirdest game of vaguely kinky chess, or that the first (and probably the only) person to recognise his prodigious talent was a fucking Scouse bastard.

 

-

 

The upside to having to listen to Midget Gem blather on about needing stay in the game in order to stay in the game was that he could be made to take the calls and thus bear the full brunt of Hurricane Neville. Jamie whistled cheerfully as he made his sandwich, exceedingly amused by how increasingly windswept Michael looked, until he burst into tears, threw the phone away, and ran upstairs. The crying bit might have just happened in Jamie’s head, but it made for a nice mental image nevertheless.

“Read my article, have you?” Jamie picked up from where he’d left off, inadvertently offering exhibit B in the process. “Did you like it?”

“LIESSSSSSSSSSSS,” Gary hissed into the phone, and Jamie could imagine him hopping around the room like bugs bunny on springs and crack. “Who was asked to stay at United longer by the best manager in the world? Who forged an incredible partnership down the right and made overlapping runs and put in more crosses than your maths test paper had? Also, how are ‘blond highlights more interesting than a drip of a moustache’?”

“Put it this way, I wouldn’t have been interested if you’d still had that shite thing on when I joined Sky. You're like a reverse Samson.”

“It’s cultured! How are Philip’s bad hair decisions cultured?”

“Having a dead mouse on your upper lip doesn’t make you a better footballer, Gareth.”

 _“Yeah, Gareth_ ,” Jamie heard someone on the other end of the line echo. He also heard a loud thwacking noise and a yelp, before the dulcet, borderline hysterical tones of Gary returned.

“Bollocks,” he said rudely. “It made me amazing. Premier League team of ten  _and_ twenty seasons. The closest you got was the seat at the back of the gala, and that was a compulsory obligation.”

“You’re only on there because there wasn’t any competition. That was basically how your position on the United team was guaranteed, wasn’t it? No one around. Ferguson could hardly play a stick in your place, though I’d think that wold have been an improvement.”

“Look, I’ve done a bit of digging and found some clips that unquestionably prove I’m the better Neville." Gary was enjoying this, even if he wasn't going to admit it. Jamie closed his eyes and imagined him bouncing up and down, gesticulating wildly, sonic screwdriver pen in hand, big touchscreen to play with. "And because I was already in it, I’ve also found clips on how Spurs are doing perfectly fine with their English players, and why Chelsea isn’t going to win the league, and why 3-5-2 is the worst thing to have happened to United since Bebe.”

“Come off it, you know you love that formation and van Gaal’s philosophy. Best thing to happen since he decided to play Fellaini up front.”

There was a gasp of horror from the other end. “How _dare_ you. We never speak of that.  The mess of long balls still gives me nightmares; it’s almost as bad as all those backpasses.”

“I actually think backpasses are an inspired bit of play. Pundits don’t give United enough credit for them.”

“Are you actually _listening_ to yourself? Christ, who died and made you the expert?”

 

 

“You did,” said Jamie gently.

Gary paused mid-protest. Jamie, quiet, hung up.

 

-

 

The next day, Jamie got an envelope in the mail. He opened it and slotted the DVD into the player, leaning back in his sofa and grinning at a twenty-two-year-old Gary Neville, skinny as a toothpick, playing in white against Liverpool. He gets the ball from Keane and dinks it up, over the head of a red, somehow manages to keep it in on the touchline. _Grrreat skill from Neville_ , the commentator enthuses. Gary looks up, crosses the ball, a looping cross that arrives neatly at Cole, who nods it in. 3-1 to United.

Jamie put his hand in the envelope and drew out a card, instantly recognising the untidy scrawl. _Phil who?_

Making a mental note to look for clips of Phil Neville being a football god, Jamie was just about to toss the card away when he realised that there was something on the other side. He flipped it over and ran his fingers across the cold ink.

_Thank you. It was nice._

Was. There was only one person he felt comfortable sitting next to in the blue studio, fighting over zonal marking. There was only one way the both of them did things, and that was never looking back. Jamie smiled, freezing the TV on the ball travelling through the air in 1997. Perhaps some memories were worth making exceptions for.

“Even if they involve us losing 3-1, you Manc wanker,” he murmured, and slipped the card into his pocket.  

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Someone did call Carra a turkey (I can't remember who it was, some irrelevant ex-Liverpool dude??)  
> 2\. Michael Owen did actually say 'it's a good run, but it's a poor run, if you know what I mean' lmao  
> 2.3 One of his nicknames was apparently 'Midget Gem' - thanks Julija's friend!  
> 2.5 He also did actually say 'to stay in the game in order to stay in the game'  
> 2.8 Vote [here](http://www.sportskeeda.com/vote/vote-which-michael-owen-worst-quotes-football-pundit)  
> 3\. [Gary loves his Weetabix.](http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/15/gary-neville-david-beckham-old-trafford-cafe-football?CMP=twt_gu) Like, [really loves his Weetabix.](https://twitter.com/GNev2/status/171870551290281984) (Phil retweeted that jsyk)  
> 4\. Gary was on the fantasy teams for both the 10 and 20 season Premier League awards :') Poor Carra lost out to Tony Adams, Rio, Brucey, Desailly and Vidic  
> 5\. Liverpool lost 1-3 to United on April 19, 1997; [Gary showed off](https://youtu.be/YlwCUVJAR8A?t=8m) for the third goal (srs tho...I never knew he could do stuff like that until I saw this clip)  
> 6\. idk...I really just had to write this because it makes me so sad, y'know, that football is such a moving-forward business, that nothing is ever the same the moment it changes, that no matter how much Gary would like to come back to punditry it's not going to happen - that they are both so proud and stubborn and stupid and that they'd never say i miss you or pls come back just....have that time, that one time, and then ...let it go ...  
> 7\. Come join us for the [carraville exchange 2016](http://carravillexchange.tumblr.com)! It's gonna be fab :3


End file.
